I am Groot.
I am Groot?
I…am Groot.
Written by Dan AbnettCover by: Lee Garbett
Illustrated by Damian Couceiro
Colored by Matt Milla
Lettered by VC’s Travis Lanham
MONSTER, HERO, GUARDIAN…GROOT!
Before he was a Guardian of the Galaxy… before the Grootfall… young Groot lived a life of tranquility on his serene home world. But when monstrous invaders attack his planet, Groot must accept his heroic destiny! Will this destiny lead him to come to blows with a young Kree soldier by the name of Mar-Vell?
Join writer Dan Abnett (GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY) and artist Damian Couceiro (THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2099, X-FORCE) as they reveal never-before-seen moments of Groot’s origin and first adventure through the galaxy!
All joking aside, “Groot” #1 is a sort of origin story for everyone’s favorite walking tree that isn’t named Treebeard. The story follows sapling Groot, along with is friends Gleef and Tweeg as their home of Planet X comes under attack by an unseen group of raiders called the Spoilers who are led by a mysterious being named Agz, who are in turn working for the Merchant’s Guild by plundering planets for their raw materials for profit. This puts Groot and company into the orbit of the Kree Empire and a young Kree private named Mar-Vell.
Fun little bit of comic book legal trivia: Mar-Vell is the reason why Marvel Comics can create a movie called “Captain Marvel” while DC has to name their older and more established Captain Marvel “Shazam”.
So what we have here is a pretty straight forward cautionary environmental fable featuring two Marvel characters who were never really that big or well known, but became pretty important later on.
“Groot” #1 is written by one of the most capable and longest lasting comic book writers working today: Dan Abnett and this comic continues to show why he is one of the best writers in the business. Abnett does two things really well here. First, he shows just how powerful the threat facing Groot and Mar-Vell by showing the results of the Spoilers rampage as personified by an army of chainsaurs, mechanical creatures that look like if someone attached a ton of heavy foresting equipment to a wide array of dinosaurs and lay waste to everything they touch. They are equal parts nightmare fuel and fun idea for a children’s toy line.
The second thing Abnett does really well is build the relationship between Groot and Mar-Vell. For starters, Abnett goes to great lengths to establish the personalities of both of the characters with Mar-Vell being a bit impatient but wanting to help people while Groot is absolutely fearless when it comes to helping his friends. Despite the massive language barrier and the conscious choice by Abnett to not translate anything that Groot or his companions say, Abnett does a great job of showing how two vastly different species can build trust and understanding with time and patience. It’s a very sweet and pleasant bit of character building amid the backdrop of a much larger and deadlier conflict.
If “Groot” #1 does have any problems, they are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. If there is a hiccup, it’s that the Spoilers aren’t really shown in the story and therefore don’t really get to show off their skills and abilities as villains. Also, there’s a pretty major space battle that takes place in the comic that is waved away in an exposition dump that could have been cool to see. Granted, the comic bypasses these problems pretty easily by showing the end result of the villain’s actions and focusing on the smaller, but much more interesting, character development instead. These are problems that might affect some readers, but it’s not that big of a deal.
The artwork on “Groot” #1 is provided by Damian Couceiro with colors by Matt Milla. The artwork is functional, easy to read, and showcases a lot of the things that make modern comic book art great, and shows a few ways that it could be better. Couceiro does a great job of making sure everything looks the way it should. The Kree military uniforms look great, the spaceships look functional and interesting enough to stoke the reader’s imagination, and Groot and his companions are appropriately cute. On top of that, Couceiro and Milla do a great job of enhancing the action and characters with some background effects that lend a great sense of impact and motion to the story. It’s a style that lends itself really well towards a comic book, and that’s kind of the problem.
Continued belowThis is not to say that the artwork on “Groot “ #1 is bad by any stretch of the imagination, it’s just that sometimes it feels a bit too safe and familiar. If you’ve picked up a Marvel book over the past couple of years, you’ve probably seen a lot of books that look a lot like this one. Again, it’s not a bad thing since the nature of Big Two superhero books probably involved a lot of editorial oversight and artistic requirements to prevent reader confusion, but sometimes it feels like it would be nice for Marvel to experiment with some different art styles and show how crazy and wonderful comic books can be. Still, this little gripe about the state of the world shouldn’t prevent you from enjoying what is really good artwork on a really good book.
“Groot” #1 is a solid beginning to what looks to be a great series. It takes two characters in the cosmic corner of the Marvel Universe who don’t get to share the limelight too often and puts them together on an adventure that threatens to test their resolve to the limit. It will be very interesting to see how this turns out.
Final Verdict: 8.7- I am Groot (translation: solid art and great character work come together to bring two relatively obscure Marvel characters to the limelight and tell an intriguing story).
